July

1 – Sync MPIMs (Multi-party instant messages)

Some conversations require more than one person. But, not all conversations are appropriate for specific channels and spaces.

Enter MPIMs- a commonly used feature within Slack & Microsoft Teams.

With our latest release, employees in Slack can now invite their colleagues who use Microsoft Teams to join a 3-way, 4-way or anything up to an 8-way direct message.

By the time you have more than 8 people in a DM, you’re back in the channel world (according to Slack).

The same is applicable across all our combinations of platforms. That means you can host multi-party instant messages between Microsoft Teams and Slack.

Multi-party instant messaging between 3 people in Slack and Microsoft Teams

You can see in the image above that the entire conversation (text, emojis, files etc) between multiple users is replicated on both Slack and Microsoft Teams.

To give you a bit of insight into our development process, MPIMs proved to be deceptively more complicated than you might have thought!

Read on for additional details and edge-case scenarios 🤓

For starters, the feature is not named the same on each messaging platform:

Slack = “MPIM” (Multi Party Instant Message)

Microsoft Teams = “Group Chat”

Handling Slack MPIMs of 9 or more

Secondly, you may have noticed we mentioned there is an 8-person member limit to MPIMs in Slack.

For this reason, if Mio needs to sync a 9+ person group chat from Microsoft Teams, it will be synced in Slack as a private channel.

For Slack Enterprise Grid users, this can also be a private, multi-workspace channel, with members across multiple Slack workspaces, in addition to Microsoft Teams members.

Handling cross-platform MPIMs with synced and non-synced employees

As you may remember, it’s easy to quickly get your channels synced with Mio using our Team Sync feature, and for DMs, you can use People Sync to prompt your employees to sync their chat accounts.

Channels don’t require members in them to be synced, whereas DMs do.

So…what does this mean for MPIMs, you ask?

Non-synced employees will be able to create and read all MPIMs from other local or synced members, but until they are synced, Mio cannot send their outgoing messages across platforms.

For that reason, Mio will automatically ensure non-synced employees are prompted to sync when creating or sending their first message in an MPIM.

2 – Sync private channels

As of July, we can officially confirm that the ability to syncprivate channels in team sync is now live. As mentioned in the June product update, Mio now supports syncing both public and private channels.

You can sync private Slack channels across Webex Teams within the Mio Control Hub

When private channels are synced, your users can:

Maintain a consistent group conversation in any channel – no longer just public channels

View file uploads sent across platform in private channels

Send emoji reactions and @Mentions across platform in private channels

When initiating syncing of private channels, you also have the option to change a channel to public. It won’t be possible to revert this once synced, so decide wisely!

When effecting this change, you also have the option to make this standard each time you sync a private channel within your current session.

What if you want to make a previously synced Slack private channel public?

You cannot change a Slack private channel back to public after it has been synced. However, we’ve created this process to achieve your end goal:

Find the channel/space in your Mio Control Hub under Team Sync

Edit the sync

Search for the channel or space you’d like to change back to public.

Remove the channel (this will stop syncing) and save the sync

Now, change the channel or space setting back to public within Slack or Microsoft Teams

Go back to your Mio Hub > Team Sync

Sync the channel (which should now show as public) & save.

3 – Mio roadmap

If you head over to m.io/roadmap, you’ll find the latest features that our product team is hard at work developing.

Mio roadmap

We’ve sorted the roadmap into sections so customers can understand what is coming:

Near term

Mid term

Long term

Released and live

Each feature had its own card where you can read in more detail what the feature will deliver.

Multi-party instant messaging on the Mio roadmap

The majority of our roadmap comes from suggestions and experiences from real-world customers. So, if you have a pressing need for something in Mio, let us know by speaking to your Customer Success Manager or leaving a comment on this new home for product updates.

You can also see specific details of features that have recently gone live on our release notes page.

That’s it for July! For a full history of recent releases and product updates, you can scroll down for the previous month by month briefings.

June

In the June product updates, we introduced new features for private channels, enhanced the synced channel membership experience, and launched the Mio status page.

We’ve also introduced another new member of staff.

1 – Private Channels

Just like syncing public channels, Mio now supports syncing private channels.

Each messaging platform handles private channels and membership in different ways, so let’s dive into the details by platform:

Slack and Cisco Webex Teams

Sync a private Slack Channel with Cisco Webex teams

If you sync a private channel in Slack with Webex Teams, it will create a global space in Webex Teams, so that only invited members can join this space.

Sync a moderated Webex Teams space with Slack

Webex Teams has moderated spaces that only a moderator can administer. Nobody other than the moderator has privileges to invite additional members to the space.

It is this functionality (moderated Webex Teams space) that Mio will sync with Slack.

Slack and Microsoft Teams

Sync a private Slack channel with Microsoft Teams

When you add a Slack private channel to Microsoft Teams, Microsoft creates a private team and a public channel in that private team – emulating a private channel feature for Microsoft Teams. You also have the option to make it public if this betters suits your team.

Sync a channel in a private team in Microsoft Teams with Slack

If you have channels in private teams within Microsoft Teams, these can be synced with private channels in Slack. By syncing public channels in private teams, Slack users will maintain the consistent private channel experience.

When adding a public channel in a private team to Slack, admins can also choose to make it public in Slack.

Private channels

Finally, we’ve made it clear which channels are private by including a padlock next to the channel name. Like our “supertopsecret” channel above.

When private channels are synced, your users can:

Maintain a consistent group conversation in any channel – no longer just public channels

View file uploads sent across platform in private channels

Send emoji reactions and @Mentions across platform in private channels

2 – Synced channel membership improvements

Once synced, people will be added to new channels as they are @ mentioned or invited.

Like before, people will still be able to search for any public channel and join it (once it has been synced using Team sync).

This is especially helpful for Microsoft Teams to Slack, where Microsoft Teams membership is at the team level, not channel member.

In this scenario, rather than inviting all Slack Primary members to all synced Teams channels, members will be added to the synced channel in Slack as they are mentioned or invited.

3 – Mio status page

If you head over to m.io/status you will find the real-time status of our service. You can use this page to monitor any outages or issues that may occasionally occur.

Mio status page

The color indicators relate to: up and working fine (green), an incident known (amber), and and outage reported (red).

The not available symbol represents functionality not currently available via the specified platform.

4 – Remove teams

In the May product updates, we introduced functionality to remove a sync. This month, we’ve made it possible to remove a whole team, should you ever need to.

You might need to remove a team if:

The team was for a temporary project

All members of the team have left the business

The team has been rolled into a new team or channel

A duplicate team exists

To do this, head to Manage Teams.

Manage Teams

Under the actions column, click the “…” next to the team you wish to remove.

Click “…” then Remove

You will receive a warning notification which will make you aware of what happens when you remove a team. Check this through to make sure you are okay with that, then hit RemoveTeam.

Remove Team

5 – New to our team

Amruta Birar

Amruta has joined as a Quality Assurance Engineer. She brings technical expertise to automate QA.

Amruta Birar

Amruta has been pursuing her career in a direction so that she can serve the world to develop products that provide meaningful insights to make a world a better place!

“Most of the problems in the world are due to lack of good communication and Mio solves that problem. I am excited to be a part of this journey and create an impact in the domain of quality assurance!”

That’s it for June! You can also visit our product release notes page to see a full history of recent releases.

May

In May’s productupdates, we added several new features within the Mio Control Hub to offer admins more insight and capabilities when syncing their teams across Slack, Microsoft Teams & Cisco Webex Teams.

We also welcomed two new full-time staffers (you may be familiar with them already!).

Let’s dive right into the details!

1- More dashboard metrics

The Mio dashboard now has additional metrics to give you further insight into how your teams are benefitting from Mio.

Dashboard metrics appear when you first log in to your Mio Control Hub

Once you’ve synced two or more teams, the above tiles will appear demonstrating key cross-platform metrics about the channels and people synced within your teams. This is especially important when first rolling out or trialing Mio.

Time frames are included to examine change over the last 14, 30 and 60 day period – as well as an option to see all-time stats. Platform usage breakdowns are also included within channel activity.

Channels synced

The channels synced tile shows the number of channels currently synced across platforms within your entire organization, in comparison to the total number of channels available to sync.

People synced

Similarly, the people synced tile shows the number total number of users that are synced in your organization, in comparison to the total number of users within your organization.

Channel activity

The channel activity tile shows a detailed view of the total number of messages sent between platforms among all channels synced in your organization.

You can see a platform percentage breakdown to better understand usage. In the screenshot above, you can see 63% of users are sending messages from Slack and 38% are using Webex Teams. Toggle between the last 14, 30, 60 days, or all-time to measure change and adoption.

People sync details

People sync details shows the number of synced people by their primary platform. The number of users yet to be synced is also shown so you know how far away you are from complete cross-platform collaboration.

Direct messages

The direct messages tile shows how many direct messages have been sent from one platform to another. As you prompt more people to sync their accounts, this stat should also increase.

@Mentions

The @mentions tile shows how many times users have been @mentioned in channels across platforms.

2- Remove a sync

Within Team Sync, you can now view and remove any syncs that are no longer needed in your organization. By clicking the “…” icon next to each sync, you will be presented with the options to edit or remove the sync.

Once the sync has been removed, channels on each respective platform go back to being non-synced channels.

If you are using the new Future Sync function, it will also be disabled.

3- Hover to show sync actions in Team Sync

When syncing channels in Team Sync, there is now a cleaner experience. Within your channels list, hover over any channel in your list to see actions to connect or add your channel to the other platform.

Hover to show sync options

4- Origin and destination labels in Team Sync

When syncing channels, labels have now been added to show you the origin and destination of your channels. For example, in the below screenshot, you can see “devops” has been added to Microsoft Teams, from Slack.

Origin and destination labels for channel syncing

5- New to our team

Dominic Kent

Dominic has worked as a contractor with Mio since July 2018, running the Dispatch blog. He joins Mio full time as Director of Content Marketing and Communications.

Targeted with growing the brand through all forms of content, Dominic will use his background in Unified Comms and product marketing roles, as well as his recent experience as a freelance journalist with UC Today, to curate content that relates to genuine enterprise messaging needs.

Dominic Kent

“Joining Mio full time was a no-brainer. The best marketing tactic is to have a great product. The Mio team has built a product that will dramatically improve the way businesses communicate internally. How could I not be part of this journey?”

Joe Beutler

Joe has joined as our Customer Success Manager. He was most recently co-founder of DASH, a Capital Factory Accelerator company. As a former Goldman Sachs software engineer, Joe brings technical expertise to our Customer Success team.

“The Mio team’s prior startup experience combined with a unique product has created a rare market opportunity. I am thrilled to join Mio at this exciting stage of the company.”

That’s it for the month of May! You can also visit our product release notes page to see a full history of recent releases.

April

April was a big deal.

The all-new Mio Control Hub for IT admins had been in design and development phase over the last few months.

After extensive feedback, we launched the next generation of Mio.

The new UI and features in v3 will make it easier for admins to configure and sync their teams. It will also provide deeper insights into multi-vendor messaging environments across Slack, Cisco Webex Teams and Microsoft Teams.

Overview

Within the new Hub, you’ll quickly find access to all main features on the lefthand navigation:

Mio Control Hub – Dashboard

Dashboard: displays overview stats

Manage Teams: add and authorize new teams to enable syncing

Team Sync: connect your individual channels across teams, or an entire team’s channels

People Sync: prompt people to sync their primary platform for a seamless messaging experience

Onboarding in Mio v3

Track & save your progress

The latest version of Mio introduces a new onboarding format which tracks progress as you move through each step. As you complete information in each step, you see an indicator of what you have completed, and what is left to complete. As you move along the process, Mio now autosaves progress as you go.

Simplified Mio onboarding UI

Add collaborators

Within the onboarding interface, you can now add a collaborator for additional admins to view and help with the onboarding process. This is ideal for teams with different owners for Slack, Webex Teams, and/or Microsoft Teams.

Once registered for Mio, admins will receive an email containing a unique URL for your Mio account.

Create Service Accounts & Platform Apps

We’ve simplified the UI to make creating your instance of Mio a swifter process.

Once you’re done filling in the details, you just need to hit review and submit to complete your onboarding. Once approved, you’ll soon have access to your Mio Control Hub.

New features for Team Sync

Sync one, many, or all channels in your team in a single interface

Within the new Team Sync section, you begin by simply selecting two teams you’d like to sync. You can then sync all channels within them in one go, or come back to select more later. Once synced, message interoperability is created across channels and spaces.

Team Sync

Add a channel to another platform with ➡️

When a channel exists in one messaging app, but not the other, you can now sync it easily. Simply use the ➡️ feature to add the existing channel into the other chat platform. If a name already exists, Mio even flags a query so there is no overlap.

Two ways to sync channels within Team sync

Connect existing channels across platforms with 🔄

When the channels you’d like to sync already exist in both platforms, Mio now enables you to connect them with the click of a button.

Let’s say you want to connect a UX channel in Teams to a Design channel in Slack, that’s the perfect time to use this new feature within Team Sync.

Add channels across platforms or connect existing channels

Future Sync

As part of the final step in Team sync, we’ve included an option called Future Sync. Rather than returning to the Mio Hub each time an employee creates a new channel, space or team, future sync automatically syncs the new channel by adding it ( ➡️) to the other platform.

Future Sync

Future Sync is an optional setting that can be toggled on and off for your convenience.

New Search feature

Mio v3 includes a new search feature for enterprises with lots of channels. Just type the name of the channel you are looking for, and complete your sync within search.

Searching within team sync

New features for People Sync

People Sync allows admins to prompt employees to set their preferred primary chat platform so that direct messages from secondary platforms can be routed and posted natively.

People Sync in the Mio Control Hub

The new UI displays a quick assessment of each person’s sync status. Admins can then take action to prompt individuals, a group, or an entire team in bulk. You can read more about People Sync here.

Auto-Prompt

When the new auto-prompt feature is enabled in People Sync, admins do not need to individually prompt users.

Instead, your Mio app or service user account will send a triggered prompt message to the user when they attempt to DM with a synced colleague.

Channelytics

The new Channelytics feature provides insights about your synced channel activity and engagement.

Channelytics

Drilling into a channel shows log-level information, in case you’re curious about active users and most recent activity. Expect to see more improvements to channelytics later this year.

Synched channel

That’s it for April! You can also visit our product release notes page to see a full history of recent releases.

Below outlines all cross-platform messaging features Mio will enable for each platform:

Now let’s dive into some specifics!

Microsoft Teams & Slack Interoperability Progress:

1. Private and group chats in Microsoft Teams map to DM’s & channels in Slack

Whether you’re starting a quick conversation with a colleague, or pulling together a team in a channel to answer questions, we’re going all-in on full interoperability for Microsoft Teams conversations with Slack participants.

Self-service setup process

Admins ready to get started with Mio can complete their setup via a self-service URL with guided instructions.

Mio Hub setup

Customized channel and team syncing

Our new Team Sync feature will enable a variety of ways to view and customize how admins can keep their teams in sync across chat platforms. This will include individual and “full team” channel syncing functionality.

Also included will be the ability to rename channels and auto-add any new channels employees create in one chat platform to appear in the other.

Sync people at a glance, or automatically!

People Sync allows admins to prompt employees to set their preferred primary chat platform so that messages from secondary platforms can be routed and posted natively.

People Sync

The new UI will display a quick assessment of each person’s sync status. Admins can then take action to prompt individuals, a group, or an entire team in bulk.

An auto-prompt feature will be available as a “set-and-forget” offering, which keeps new (or forgetful!) employees informed about how to activate syncing.

New to our Team

In addition to new product UI and features, we’d like to take a moment to introduce our newest team members:

Jacob Ross, VP of Product

Jacob Ross joined as VP of Product in December. He was previously Program Manager at Ticom Geomatics. You may have seen him at Cisco Collaboration SVET this week.

Jacob Ross

“Mio has been great. The team is fun and super smart and everybody is excited about our product.”

Frank Geck, Director of Customer Success

He was most recently at Cisco on the Collaboration Ecosystem team, where he helped grow the program from scratch to more than forty partners generating over eighty million dollars of impact yearly.

Frank Geck at Cisco Collaboration SVET

“I joined Mio for two reasons. First, the team. Tom Hadfield has put together an exceptional team that I wanted to be a part of. Second, the need for the Mio interoperability solution. Collaboration should work and not be restricted by walled gardens. In today’s work environment, it’s impossible to mandate which tool people will use. Let them choose.”

Brent Musat, DevOps Engineer

BrentMusat also joined the Mio team as our DevOps Engineer. He also joins from Ticom Geomatics where he spent 7 years as a Test Engineer.

Brent Musat, DevOps Engineer

“I’m extremely impressed with the team of people here at Mio. Everybody is so knowledgeable and dedicated to making this product work. It’s exciting and motivating to see that level of enthusiasm from everybody.

That’s it for the month of February! You can also visit our product release notes page to see a full history of recent releases.

November

Mio v2 was announced in November!

We also re-architected our service so it runs in a dedicated environment for each customer. Even more, the end-user experience for employees has been simplified, so adoption of cross-platform communication can happen instantly.

Read on for all the details about these updates and features in Mio version 2.0:

1. More admin controls in the Mio Hub

We’ve streamlined the M.io admin dashboard, aka “The Hub” to help IT administrators have full control over their team’s messaging interoperability across each chat platform. This means a business can log into their own Mio Hub site and configure all their settings for the following sections:

Service accounts – link up the service accounts via auth-flow per platform

Channel Sync – control how channels and spaces mirror

People Sync – prompt users to connect accounts and show an overview of the team roster and who is fully connected to Mio

2. New dedicated Mio Hub environment

Building on the above, and based on our customers’ feedback, we’re going all-in on isolating each instance of Mio in a dedicated environment.

By incorporating the latest in container technology, there is no longer a public version of Mio in the Slack or Webex app stores.

As of Q4, we’ve moved all our technology into dedicated and virtual private clouds so each customer has complete control of their messaging interoperability.

3. Mio’s UX – more seamless than ever

Click to see how DMing works across Slack, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex Teams

With cross-platform messaging, we’ve learned it’s critical to act invisibly behind the scenes to create an end-user experience that “just works” without adding cognitive load for end users.

With this in mind, we’ve reduced a large portion of our original conversational menus to keep the experience as true to their native messaging app’s experience as possible.

Some examples of Mio’s seamless native experience:

If you create a new channel or space, we’ll mirror that channel on the other platform

Format text in any way and we’ll match it on the other platforms

@mention colleagues and we’ll transcribe it automatically across corresponding platforms

Add guests in Slack, Cisco Webex Teams or Microsoft Teams, and we can natively invite them on the opposite apps

Edit or delete a message, and Mio will reciprocate the action on the other platforms

Add a user on one platform natively, we’ll add them on the other

After an IT admin completes Hub setup, employees can immediately start chatting and using the functionality above, without logging in or doing anything different than they did before.

Many of our end users won’t even realize they are communicating with a colleague who uses another platform!

August

In August, our product update saw two key features that give businesses the ability to synchronize all public channels and spaces: The new Mio Hub and Channel Sync.

Based on user feedback in pilot customers, we’ve streamlined the Mio setup process to make enabling an entire organization’s cross-platform chat possible, all without requiring employees to take additional setup steps.

Let’s take a closer look at both updates.

Introducing the Mio Hub for Admins

Creating a hub in Mio

What is the Mio Hub?Mio Hub is the best way to quickly connect all Slack workspaces and Webex Teams accounts in your organization. This power feature activates team-wide interoperability across all chat accounts and it’s life for you to try it out.

Here are the simple steps you go through when setting up your Mio Hub:.1. Go to http://m.io and select “Create Hub”

Name Your Mio Hub & choose an icon

Authorize admin access for your primary chat platform

Allowing access in Mio

Add a second chat team account

Add a second team

Mio Webex Authorization

Once you confirm all these steps, you’ve created a Mio Hub for your company at https://{companyname}.m.io!

2. New: “Channel Sync” for Slack & Webex Teams

The last step of the new Hub creation process above reveals our other new feature, Channel Sync.

What is Channel Sync?Admins can make all public Slack channels auto-appear as spaces for Webex users, and make all Webex Teams spaces auto-appear as channels for Slack users. Create a conversation on one end and it’s live and running on the other in real-time ✊

See public Slack channels in the Webex Directory, and Webex spaces in the Slack channel directory, thanks to Mio

Why we built it:For companies with tens/hundreds/thousands of channels and spaces across Slack and Webex, there’s a strong need for all public conversations to be listed and available.

Once Mio Channel Sync is activated, it’s easy for any employee to natively find, join and invite members.

How Channel Sync works for admins:

During Hub setup shown above, Mio will create a real-time copy of all public channels and spaces.

Channels and spaces found across all team accounts that were imported into the Mio Hub will be copied and sync’d for members, and will also be automatically added to public native Slack and Webex Teams directories.

Private channels will not be included in Channel Sync.

Channel Sync also works for multiple Slack workspaces, not just Slack to Webex Teams.

How Channel Sync works for employees:

Employees have all spaces and channels available to join and chat in both Webex and Slack. They can instantly send messages in these channels and the entire group will receive them, no matter what platform they each use.

All public conversations can be discovered and joined via the native Slack & Webex Teams directories.

Employees can optionally decide to set one chat platform as their “primary” moving forward, so when they receive invitations to new spaces or channels, Mio knows to automatically create a new copy within their preferred platform.Channel and Space invitations

You made it…

You’ve reached the beginning of this version of the Mio product updates. If you’re after more, check out our Workplace Messaging Report where we reveal the results of current and future usage of apps like Slack, Cisco Webex Teams and Microsoft Teams.

Then make sure you’re following us on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep up to date with the latest product and industry happenings.

[…] and give you more insight to your Slack and Webex Teams usage. That’s why our latest product update consists of a revamped admin UI and new features to make onboarding and management of Mio simpler […]